Major Documents,
Books, Essays, Pamphlets, & Tracts in the Historical Development of
the American Constitutional RepublicAnglo-American Antecedents
in the Struggle of Private Rights& Freedom through
Constitutionally Limited GovernmentFrom Magna Carta to the
U.S. Bill of Rights

The
Charter of Liberties of King Henry I (1100)(Through this charter,
also known as the Coronation Charter, written by Henry I when he ascended
the throne, the king formally bound himself to the laws, setting the stage
for the development of the rule of law and constitutionalism.)

English
Bill of Rights (1689)(Passed by Parliament
just after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which established a constitutionally
limited monarchy after the abdication and flight from England of James
II, this document inspired George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, and other American
founders and served as a model for the Virginia Declaration of Rights and
the U.S. Bill of Rights.)

Second
Treatise on Civil Government by John Locke (1689)(Although not published
until 1689, the manuscript may have been written ten years earlier and
its main ideas of natural individual rights and government limited by law
had been circulating in "underground" form for several years.)

Common
Sense (1776)( First published anonymously
on January 10, 1776, this small book made publishing history in terms of
the rapidity with which it attained a widespread circulation and readership
throughout the American colonies and in Europe. In it Thomas Paine argued
passionately for American political independence from Great Britain and,
reiterating the basic Lockean state-of-nature model, persuasively critiqued
monarchism in general and the King of England in particular. Instead, he
advocated a constitutional republic where the rule of law would supplant
the arbitrary dictates of kings. "For as in absolute governments the King
is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought
to be no other.")

Virginia
Declaration of Rights by
George Mason (1776)(This document, written
by George Mason, was drawn upon by Thomas Jefferson for the opening paragraphs
of the Declaration of Independence. It was widely copied by the other colonies
and became the basis of the U. S. Bill of Rights.)